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The US already suffers from a declining birthrate, to the point where we almost rely on immigration to maintain population growth. And in the wake of the Trump

The US already suffers from a declining birthrate, to the point where we almost rely on immigration to maintain population growth. And in the wake of the Trump Administration, that seems to be declining. Unless you embrace immigration or natalism (or both), your (age) demographic story is not going to look good in 20-30 years.

cagenut 8y ago
growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell
- spamizbad 8y ago
  That's fine, but now you need a way to cope with an outsized elderly population. Not just funding their benefits, but also providing them care, etc. Without population growth, this becomes an extremely expensive situation.
  - corysama 8y ago
    Because of global urbanization, that's a problem the whole world is going to have soon enough. Japan is leading the way and the US is slowly following. But, the trend is that in a hundred years the entire planet will be having sub-replacement birthrate. Yay. The population explosion crisis has accidentally been averted. Oops. Now we have the opposite crisis to deal with instead. Might as well start figuring it out early.
mhneu 8y ago
Yes, and historically America has been unique amongst Western countries in that America has embraced immigration. That embrace of immigration is perhaps the main reason the US has had a strong economy. Immigrants fuel the US university system, the strongest in the world, and the tech economy, which feed off each other. And accepting immigrants has led to a cosmopolitan feel in the US, which makes high-skilled immigrants want to come here. That is a big reason why New York is a finance capital. The United States is now destroying its unique brainpower advantage by destroying immigration (basically in pursuit of political power by one party). It's a disaster for the US. But the smart immigrants will now go to other countries for university and start companies in other countries. It's a huge opportunity for other countries.
- red_admiral 8y ago
  America might have been embracing immigration more, and for longer, but the Britain you have today too is to a large extent a consequence of embracing immigration post-WWII as we needed a workforce to rebuild our country. See "windrush generation" (more recently: "windrush scandal" over how poorly some of them have been treated) . If you're living in the UK you might have heard about it on the news recently (I say with typical British understatement). Immigration was certainly good for our economy too.
  - mhneu 8y ago
    And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the UK university system (and high tech economy, see DeepMind) is extremely strong. Having a lot of immigrants makes it attractivr for other high skilled immigrants to come and live.

cagenut 8y ago

growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell

spamizbad 8y ago
That's fine, but now you need a way to cope with an outsized elderly population. Not just funding their benefits, but also providing them care, etc. Without population growth, this becomes an extremely expensive situation.
- corysama 8y ago
  Because of global urbanization, that's a problem the whole world is going to have soon enough. Japan is leading the way and the US is slowly following. But, the trend is that in a hundred years the entire planet will be having sub-replacement birthrate. Yay. The population explosion crisis has accidentally been averted. Oops. Now we have the opposite crisis to deal with instead. Might as well start figuring it out early.

mhneu 8y ago

Yes, and historically America has been unique amongst Western countries in that America has embraced immigration. That embrace of immigration is perhaps the main reason the US has had a strong economy. Immigrants fuel the US university system, the strongest in the world, and the tech economy, which feed off each other. And accepting immigrants has led to a cosmopolitan feel in the US, which makes high-skilled immigrants want to come here. That is a big reason why New York is a finance capital. The United States is now destroying its unique brainpower advantage by destroying immigration (basically in pursuit of political power by one party). It's a disaster for the US. But the smart immigrants will now go to other countries for university and start companies in other countries. It's a huge opportunity for other countries.

red_admiral 8y ago
America might have been embracing immigration more, and for longer, but the Britain you have today too is to a large extent a consequence of embracing immigration post-WWII as we needed a workforce to rebuild our country. See "windrush generation" (more recently: "windrush scandal" over how poorly some of them have been treated) . If you're living in the UK you might have heard about it on the news recently (I say with typical British understatement). Immigration was certainly good for our economy too.
- mhneu 8y ago
  And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the UK university system (and high tech economy, see DeepMind) is extremely strong. Having a lot of immigrants makes it attractivr for other high skilled immigrants to come and live.